


Always Be There

by lothalmoons



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bill is upset, Dreams, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern Era, Old Married Couple, kinda???, thats as close to a trope as this fic gets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 19:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19302406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lothalmoons/pseuds/lothalmoons
Summary: Bill reminisces on some bittersweet memories which lead to unhappy dreams.





	Always Be There

The quiet moments they shared were few and far between. Practices and shows and interviews and meet and greets took up so much of their time that they barely had any left for themselves. Every day was filled with such noise and bustle that it felt foreign, almost like there was something wrong, when they listened but heard nobody calling their names. Even the city seemed to have grown quieter in the early night, as if finding in itself a generosity to slow itself down for the two in the penthouse looking down at the cars that seemed to be making no noise. It was the first time in weeks that they truly felt that they could relax, exhale all their troubles and drink in the silence and truly experience each other’s presence.

Bill inhaled as he laid back into Ted, taking in his familiar scent that reminded him of home. He felt the warmth of the other man as it passed through his shirt. The form behind him, soft but offering support, grounded him in the moment, and as arms wrapped around his waist, he let his head fall back into the space between Ted’s neck and shoulder, just above his collarbone, that seemed a perfect fit.

Everything seemed to be a perfect fit. Bill inched his hand closer to where Ted’s were laced around him, and as Ted separated his hands to take Bill’s in one of his own, Bill sighed in contentment at the feeling of their fingers being loosely intertwined, with his hand being just small enough to be covered by Ted’s. He let his senses be taken for a ride, focusing on the light rise and fall of Ted’s chest matched by an almost indiscernible sound of breathing and the light tingling of exhale by his ear. It seemed like only yesterday that they had found themselves in the same position, though they were on the floor of Ted’s room, and Ted’s breath had come out in much more raggedy hitches than the soft undulation then.

_June 26, 1988_

_Bill felt his hot, quick breath on his hand as it passed over his parted lips, slowly regaining feeling. Though he was fully clothed, he felt completely exposed as he let the coldness from the floor seep unhindered into his skin. Despite the millions of sensations all hitting him at once, all he could focus on was his beating heart, pounding at his rib cage. The sound of Ted softly gasping for air right next to his ear caused his whole body to involuntarily stand even more on end, his heart beating more rapidly, slamming into him with each second that passed. He traced over his neck, fingers barely grazing his skin, and as he felt the tender skin, he let out a sigh._

_It had really happened. He had finally kissed Ted. It was just supposed to be a soft and quick peck; he wasn’t sure why he had done it anyway, but Ted’s lips looked so soft and his eyes so inviting and he smelled so good that it just felt...right. So he had gotten on his tiptoes, made sure his balance was steady, and planted a soft one right on his lips. He had just been about to pull away, but, well, Ted had kissed back, and one thing led to another and he had pushed Ted up against the wall and closed the gap between their bodies and wasn’t sure if what they had done after that could’ve been classified as merely kissing. He felt like he needed a more meaningful word to describe something that sparked every nerve in his body and changed him forever._

_It was only after they had separated, after oxygen had rushed into their lungs from panting breaths and the stars from their heads had cleared that reality began to set in. They were two dudes, best friends, and they had just made out with each other. Hard. And they didn’t regret a thing._

_Bill had put his head in his hands and collapsed to the ground, sliding down the wall and making contact with the ground with a loud thud._

_“Dude…what did I just do?” His voice strained and cracked as he fully realized where he was, what he did, and most important, who he did it with._

_“I think you left a hickey on my neck, dude,” Ted said quietly from where he was still standing behind Bill, up against the wall. He knew that’s not what Bill’s question was about, not fully about anyway, but Ted knew that he wasn’t able to give Bill the answer he was looking for._

_“Your dad’s going to kill us.” Bill’s pulse quickened, as he, his mind spiralling, involuntarily imagined what would happen if anyone found out. That’d be it. Ted would for sure be sent to Oate’s, and Bill would never see him again. The worst possible thing that could ever happen would be all his fault._

_“My dad won’t find out,” Ted tried to assure him, but his own voice quavered, and he thought of the unthinkable._

_Bill let his head fall into his hands, defeated. He felt his throat tighten up and his face heat up, and he sighed - though it sounded more like a choke - into his hands. He wanted to scream about how much of an idiot he was - a stupid, good for nothing, impulsive kid who always ruined everything with his thoughtless actions and messed up feelings. He felt Ted sit down behind him, his legs spread out around him so that they were so close to touching, Ted’s chest to Bill’s back._

_“I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long, dude,” Ted told him, now so close to his ear that it sent a shiver down his spine. “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to.”_

_Bill felt a small smile appear on his face, whether it was from happiness or some sad kind of irony, he wasn’t sure. He laid back, hesitantly, stopping more than a few times to wordlessly see if what he was doing way okay, into Ted, and through the rapid heartbeats he felt thumping into his back, he heard the words Ted hadn’t been strong enough to say himself: and I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do it again. He lifted up his head to stare at the ceiling as to stop the tears from running down his face and grabbed Ted’s hand from where it laid, palm up, at his side. Ted held his back, telling him everything he needed to hear in the way he intertwined their hands. This is hard, he squeezed Bill’s hand, but we’ll get through it. We’ve always been there for each other, he rubbed circles into Bill’s thumb, and nothing will change that. This might be…confusing, heinous, and most non-triumphant, he dug his nail into Bill’s palm, but I wouldn’t change it for the world._

_They sat together, on the floor, connected, for hours, but they didn’t kiss - they barely even looked at each other. They wanted to keep fresh in their minds their one moment of true expression, actual love, that they had ever experienced, fearing that it was the only memory of it that they would ever have._

Thinking back, Bill never thought that he would not only be able to kiss Ted more than that single time, but actually be in a relationship with him - hell, not only that, but marry him. He still had moments where he didn’t believe that his life was truly real, that it was simply another dream that his cruel, seventeen-year-old mind had conjured up, because it just seemed too perfect, too good, to be true. 

That’s why those moments were so precious to him, the quiet ones where there was nothing but the two of them and their unspoken words. They grounded him. Being able to close his eyes and still feel the rise and fall of Ted’s chest or his soft voice as he hummed a song made him not afraid to recognize to himself that it was truly real.

_November 16, 1987_

_The world seemed to have circled around them in roaring fans and flashing lights and booming sound from instruments that Bill wasn’t aware were being played. The drum beat echoed in his chest and seemed to jumpstart his heart each time the sticks hit. But none of it mattered to him. Through the chaos and the waves of music and emotion all he could focus on was him. Ted. Bill’s guitar now hung limply around his neck but notes still sprung from the strings. Their eyes locked. His own green eyes met Ted’s brown ones in an explosion, as if they were seeing each other for the first time. The fiery twinkle that Bill saw, even from what seemed like so far away, only further lit his myriad of clashing emotions and brought them together as one._

_His feet barely touched the stage as he made his way across. His senses dulled; the colored lights became only blurs, and the music and voices melted together into an indistinguishable, hazy pounding, as if he had been submerged into water. The only figure that stayed clear was Ted who seemed like the center of the world. His encouraging smile pulled Bill ever so closer to him, and as he stood in front of him then, he had separated from the world entirely, not recognizing the muffled fog that grew more distant around him as reality. The only thing that he knew was real was Ted._

_“You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to do this,” he said._

_“Do what?” Though Bill moved his mouth, no sound came out._

_Ted smiled wider, almost beaming. He leaned down so close to Bill’s ear that Bill picked up every slight tremor in his breath. He shivered as Ted spoke again._

_“I love you, Bill.”_

_It was only a whisper yet it was the clearest, most resounding sound that Bill had ever heard. How long he’d waited to hear those four words - it felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of waiting, hoping, yearning, and it had all been worth it. His eyes widened as he looked up to see Ted again, but Ted had already moved downward to meet Bill’s lips._

_The kiss felt otherworldly, the way he had imagined kisses were supposed to feel like - the way he had hoped his many kisses with girls he did not know nor wish to remember would feel like but never did. Those kisses had always felt fake, contrived, totally empty of any true feeling. They had always left a bitter taste in his mouth, lipstick mixing with his ill feelings of inadequacy and loneliness. He knew for certain, though, that this kiss would not leave him sick. Bill had always wondered what those climactic movie kisses were like - as the movie stars ran to each other in the pouring rain, desperation palpable, and their lips collided on the movie screen. Now he knew. They tasted sweet._

_The roar of the audience came back into focus and Bill was growing acutely aware of the rhythmic pounding. The noise tore him away from the kiss, his mind unable to focus on anything but the banging. He tried to hang on, desperately clinging to the bliss that was rapidly slipping away from him. Even Ted now seemed to be dissolving, his lips turning cold, ghostly. Bill had to open his eyes, take in the chaos so that maybe he could grab Ted back from the noise that was taking him away. But as he opened his eyes, he was no longer greeted by thousands of fans atop a stage, no longer standing in front of Ted, but accosted by a beam of light that blinded him until he realized that it was simply just sunshine coming through his shades._

_A panic rose in him as his surroundings became more clear. His clock, blaring at the side of his bed was no longer a distant pounding but a concrete piece of metal. His blankets slowly gained their color; the posters on his walls became distinct, and with each passing second, the feeling of Ted and that kiss faded away, like sand blowing out of his hand in the wind, only flying away from him faster as he tried to grasp it, until he was left with only an obscure remnant, almost worse than having nothing at all._

_Ted would be outside waiting for him in ten minutes - real Ted. Real Ted who was his best friend and bandmate. Real Ted who thought that Bill kissed all those girls because he liked them. Real Ted who would never know that the only reason Bill kissed those girls was so that he can imagine that it’s him who’s kissing back. Real Ted - the person who Bill had been in love with since he could remember and the reason he never wanted to be woken up by alarm clocks ever again._

Bill felt his consciousness slip away from him as his breathing evened out and his mind slowed down, leaving his old memories to be sorted through another day. Ted noticed that his husband had fallen into a light sleep and opted not to move, lest he disturb him, and instead stayed with his arms wrapped around him in the silence of the room.

In just about an hour, the sunlight that had been seeping through the windows had disappeared, and in its place, the hundreds of neon signs throughout the city produced a soft glow that lit the inside of the room. The temperature had dropped inside the room as well - significantly. The damned air conditioning had been acting up all summer, and when it chose to finally work, it was fixed on freezing the both of them. An involuntary shiver ran through Ted, and he figured that then was as good of a time as any to go and grab a blanket. He would be out on the couch all night - he couldn’t very well carry Bill back to their room and had no intention of sleeping away from him. They had slept in the same room ever since they had gotten their first apartment together as naive, broke twenty-year-olds, and Ted had no intention of breaking that tradition that night. Ted tried his best to wriggle out from underneath Bill, careful to barely even disturb the still air around them. There was no need to be so careful, Bill could sleep through practically anything, even a fire alarm that Ted had accidentally set off while making breakfast one morning, but nonetheless, Ted always made sure to be quiet. He placed Bill’s head down onto the couch pillow as he left to go grab a blanket from the closet.

_Bill opened his eyes, if only for just a moment. It took him a good second to realize he had fallen asleep on the couch. He gazed up at Ted through his curly hair._

_“How long was I out?” he asked._

_“About an hour.”_

_“You’re still here? Why didn’t you go to bed?”_

_Ted’s answer was simple, plain even. There was no special vocabulary, no intellectual emphasis or phrasing, yet the words that followed seemed to put every fear and misgiving and adolescent anxiety at bay._

_“Because I didn’t want to leave you.”_

_Bill smiled. It wasn’t a wide-mouthed, open smile. It wasn’t toothy or silly or holding any ounce of joke. Instead it was just a small, closed, content upturn of the lips. Rarely did Bill smile in a way that wasn’t as loud and goofy as his personality, but that time was different. Ted’s words meant something to him - something he held so deep in himself that he could only smile to his soul._

_“It’s nice being together…just like this,” he commented. He turned his gaze down from Ted and let his eyes close, the tiredness returning and weighing heavily on his eyelids. “I wish we could stay this way forever.”_

_When Bill opened his eyes for the second time, though, Ted was gone. The calmness he had felt before was gone as Ted’s previous words dissolved into the dark space around him. The coldness that wrapped around his body like a snake’s grip sent a panic through him. The room was dark with only a slice of light cutting through a part in some window blinds and with no utterance of life other than himself._

_“Ted?” he called. The room still held silent, dead. His voice raised as he called out for Ted a second time and cracked at the third, but at no point did Bill receive a response._

_“Was I just…dreaming?”_

_There was no sign that Ted had ever been in the room at all: no half-drunk cups of coffee, no newspaper clippings strewn around the table or opened letters with their envelopes still next to them. He knocked over empty beer bottles attempting, in vain, to grab their wedding picture they had placed at the center of the table._

_“Was_ everything _just a dream?”_

_Bill groped for the picture of Ted that he kept on the end table. It was taken on the first night they ever sold out a stadium fifteen years ago. Ted was wearing his favorite leather jacket, patches adorning every inch, pointing at a poster of them with the words “Wyld Stallyns: sold out” scrolled at the top in big red letters. His grin reached from ear to ear, and it seemed as if he were calling for Bill to come through the photo and share in the experience. At that moment, Bill had known that he wanted to marry Ted, no matter what it took, no matter how long he had to wait._

_Though when he picked up the glass frame and stared at the photo, Ted was not smiling back. Instead, it was a man that looked like him and a woman he did not recognize posing by the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He read the swirly script in the corner of the photo: “Thank you for an unforgettable time with an equally incredible person. Love, Jennifer.”_

_The words meant nothing to him. He had never seen that woman in his life nor been to the Leaning Tower. He didn’t know why he had this picture, but, more importantly, where Ted was. He stared into the green eyes of the man in the photo. Everything about him seemed…sad. Bill felt pity for him. His shoulders sagged, and his smile was weak. His eyes were dull and hinted at a long hidden pain that he chose to bury and try to forget. Everything about him was old and defeated, but the more Bill looked at him, the more he felt like him - because he was him._

_Ted had not simply gotten up from the couch; he had left his life years ago. Those beautiful teenage nights had just been wild fantasy, and their happy golden years had been torturous, heartbreaking dreams. Bill had always known that one day he would wake up, and Ted would be gone. He just didn’t know what to do now that it had finally happened._

_“Ted…” he murmured to whom he did not know. He said it to himself, to Jennifer, to the shell of a man photographed in Italy. “Ted where are you?”_

_The room grew smaller and his voice grew louder as he called for Ted over and over again until his throat grew dry and his eyes filled with tears as he scanned the darkness._

Bill’s eyes flew open in the soft glow of the apartment, and he jerked his head up from off the pillow. His heart was beating so fast and loud in his ears that he felt like he was going to go deaf. He tried to calm down; it had just been a dream - a really heinous dream. He was alright, at home with Ted. Before that thought could latch on into his head, though, he felt an oppressive emptiness around him and realized that Ted wasn’t there.

Ted almost jumped at the sound of Bill screaming his name from the living room. He ran through the hallway and dropped the blanket he was holding at the threshold of the living room, rushing straight for the couch where Bill was sitting straight up looking more scared than Ted had ever seen him in his life.

“What’s wrong?” Ted pressed as he reached to hold Bill’s hands. They were shaking.

“You were gone.” Those three words were all Bill managed to get out in between hitching breaths.

“I just went to get a blanket for us,” Ted tried to explain.

“You were _gone_ ,” Bill repeated, more earnestly this time. 

Ted’s knees ached, and he felt his legs go numb as he sat on the cold tile floor as Bill told him about not only his dream, but every memory that was escaping from the dam break of his mind at rapid-fire. The suffocation he had been unknowingly feeling for years was finally dissipating as he told Ted every single thing he had ever felt for years upon years that previously he had refused to talk about. He had always felt ashamed of his fears, embarrassed that he was afraid of waking up alone or turning around and finding no one behind him.

It was 3:16 am when Bill finally stopped talking and when Ted finally knew that his husband had forever held the crippling notion that their love was too good to be real. It was 3:17 am when Ted crawled up onto the couch and wrapped his arms around Bill, feeling him collapse into his chest. It was 3:32 am when they both stopped crying.

“It’s nice being together…just like this,” Bill said into Ted’s chest. He felt as if every emotion had been punched out of him, but somehow, he still enjoyed the quietness of being with Ted.

“We should make time for this more often - not this like being upset but _this_ , you know what I mean?”

“I’d like that.”

“Hey Bill?” Bill felt the deep hum of Ted’s voice as he laid on his chest.

“Yeah?”

“For the record, dude, I won’t ever leave you.”

“...”

“I promise.”

Bill didn’t know what to say. What was there _to_ say? Bill didn’t know that many words to begin with, much less any that he thought could encapsulate the gratitude and infinite adoration he held.

“I love you, Ted.”

Finally being able to close his eyes without any fear, he hoped those four words would suffice.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey happy pride! I had to write something for pride month, so here it is!
> 
> This is also a birthday present for my really good friend, so I hope she likes it!!!
> 
> (This took so long to write I hope it’s good esdlgkhdf)


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